No surprise in Turkey

There’s not a lot left to say about the Turkish presidential election, which concluded overnight in very much the expected fashion (see last week’s preview here). With only small numbers of overseas votes left to count, incumbent Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has prevailed in the runoff with 52.2% of the vote, a lead of about 2.3 million votes over his opponent, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. (Official figures are here.)

That means that the 5.6% that voted for someone else in the first round – nearly all of it for far-right independent Sinan Oğan – split almost evenly, with Kılıçdaroğlu picking up just a slight advantage (despite the fact that Oğan had endorsed Erdoğan). But a fair number of them probably stayed home, since turnout dropped about three percentage points: down to 85.7% in Turkey, still an impressive figure.

The striking thing about Turkey, as I’ve noted before, is the consistency of voting behavior. Despite Erdoğan’s growing authoritarianism, his majorities don’t get any larger. In 2014 he won with 51.8%, which rose just slightly to 52.6% in 2018. His party won the second parliamentary election of 2015 with 49.5%, then he won approval of his new constitution in 2017 with 51.4%. And in the parliamentary election a fortnight ago his ticket again had 49.5%.

It may be that increased government control over the media and increased disaffection with Erdoğan exactly cancel out. Whatever the cause, the president knows that his margin for error is small – but that may impel him to greater repression rather than to a greater responsiveness to his country’s needs.

From the rest of the world’s point of view, Erdoğan is the devil we know. He is unlikely to strike out in some bold new direction; his balancing act between east and west will continue, while domestic concerns will occupy most of his attention (especially the need to get inflation under control). Vladimir Putin will certainly be pleased with the result, but he is not likely to get any additional advantage out of it, and the existence of a channel of communication between him and NATO has its benefits for the west as well.

The Turkish opposition also has a balancing act to perform. Its constituencies include the traditional secular-nationalist establishment, the liberal Europeanised elements of the country and the heavily Kurdish districts of the south-east. Kılıçdaroğlu tried to attract far-right voters as well with a strongly anti-refugee policy, but he was unable to assemble the various components into a majority.

There will be another test early next year when local elections are held nationwide. The opposition did well last time around, especially with the emphatic victory of Ekrem İmamoğlu in the re-run mayoral election in Istanbul. İmamoğlu is widely seen as the opposition’s best future leader, as testified by Erdoğan’s determined efforts to sideline him: his immediate priority will be to stay out of jail for long enough to run for re-election.